4
Melisande Carstairs couldn’t sleep. It was happening more and more often nowadays, and there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it. Usually she kept herself so busy she would tumble into bed in a state of exhaustion more nights than not.
But that had changed recently, and she wasn’t sure why. She would lie abed and try to think peaceful thoughts, but the worries would leach through, and she would fuss over Violet, or Hetty, or young Betsey.
And when she did sleep it was worse. She would wake up, her body damp with sweat, her skin tingling, her entire body reaching for something indefinable and doubtless unpleasant.
That was what had happened tonight. After leaving Viscount Rohan in his disgusting state of arousal she’d come back home and thrown herself into a frenzy of activity, scooping up a handful of girls and leading them down into the kitchens to conduct an impromptu baking session, much to Cook’s dismay. The plump and placid Mollie Biscuits had once been one of the great whores of London, but age and girth and lassitude had drawn her into the kitchen, and once there, she’d never left. She had no problem with other women of doubtful reputation joining her there, she just didn’t like having someone else in charge. If Melisande had any sense, she would have ceded her place and gone back upstairs to look over her accounts.
But she needed the distraction as well as the cinnamon bread and lemon curd biscuits and apricot custard pots de crème. And eventually Cook unbent enough to join in the merriment, with flour and sugar dusting her plump cheeks and apricot preserves staining her apron.
And of course Melisande had eaten too much, she thought, her stomach in an uproar. It had always been a weakness, her passion for sweets, and she turned to them in times of great trial. Though why she should be so overwrought today made no sense. She’d come face-to-face with the slightly infamous Viscount Rohan, and he’d mistaken her for a madam, of all things! Normally that would have amused her, and she would have replied with enough hauteur to depress the pretensions of even the king himself. She was surprised she’d let such a silly thing disturb her.
And it hadn’t been the first time she’d seen him. Twelve years ago, during her first season, he’d been engaged to Annis Duncan and hadn’t eyes for anyone else, including the not very distinguished Melisande Cooper. She’d watch him prowl the dance floor like a great jungle cat, always circling, always one eye on his betrothed. He’d never even noticed her, which was just as well. She had never been the sort to attract the attention of men like him; she knew it, and accepted it without grief. She had no fortune, no title, no lands to inherit. She was ordinary looking, with hair that was neither brown nor blond but a boring kind of in-between shade, and her blue eyes had a tendency to see things a bit too clearly. Gentlemen had never liked that, particularly combined with her alarming habit of speaking her mind. She was also curvy rather than willowy, bustling rather than languid, practical rather than dreamy, and those depressing characteristics had made her one of the leftovers. Those gentlemen still in search of a wife had no choice but to turn to her. And so she had attracted the attention of Sir Thomas Carstairs, and hadn’t had much choice when there were no other offers and her aunt, her only surviving relative, had made it clear that one season was all she was willing to countenance.
She’d married him, perfectly aware that he wasn’t going to last long. He had a wasting disease, he was already coughing blood and his uncertain temper had promised to carry him off quite quickly. He was irritable, critical, much older than she was and the most impatient person she’d ever known.
And she’d loved him.
Indeed, with her care he’d lasted years longer than his doctor had predicted. He’d railed at her, dismissed her, criticized her and loved her in return. And when he died she’d mourned him deeply, much to the surprise of those who knew her.
The odd thing was that she hadn’t realized how wealthy he, and now she, was. He had no issue and no entailments, so her widowhood had made her an instant target of fortune hunters. After her year of mourning she’d returned to London and immediately fallen in love. How was she to know he had pockets to let and a marked preference for willowy beauties. She’d even gone so far as to allow him to seduce her, curious if a young man would be any different than Sir Thomas’s occasional, ineffectual efforts.
It had been both boring and disgusting. Wilfred Hunnicut hadn’t been particularly handsome. He had a weak chin that he tried to disguise with side whiskers, a slightly bowed posture and just the faintest hint of a belly. She had closed her eyes and instead of envisioning calm landscapes, as her aunt had suggested, she instead envisioned someone else pressing her down into the bedclothes, someone who’d looked remarkably like Benedick Rohan. Even that didn’t help, as Wilfred’s hunching and sweating over her proved distracting as he quickly finished his business. She might have been trapped with him if she hadn’t had the good fortune to catch him pressing kisses on a chambermaid.
She’d dismissed her fiancé, retained the chambermaid and decided then and there that she had no need of a man in her life. She would fill it with good works and convivial souls, which, from her years of observation, would doubtless consist of women.
Women were practical, fair-minded, inventive and far less likely to fuss over things. When they did there was usually an underlying reason, and within a few short years she’d had any number of good female friends.
She’d even managed to retain the best of them, despite her peculiar habit of rescuing soiled doves and bringing them home with her, along with their siblings and offspring.
She drew the line at their lovers or pimps. When an unfortunate joined the women of the Dovecote, they relinquished their old ways of earning a living in return for learning a decent trade.
For some reason she couldn’t ever picture Violet Highstreet hunched over a needle in a decent milliner’s shop. Though she had an eye for fashion—she’d doubtless be excellent at designing hats. If she was patient enough to learn her craft, which she most certainly wasn’t.
But I like it, she’d wailed, and Melisande couldn’t get that picture out of her mind. Any more than she could forget Benedick Rohan’s dark eyes sweeping over her in thinly veiled contempt.
Of course, he’d thought she was a madam. But she suspected he would have shown more respect for an abbess than a do-gooder. Charity Carstairs, they called her behind her back.
Well, so be it. There were worse names to be called, and the only people who’d ever flattered her had been seeking her money. But with her belated wisdom she could simply ignore the handsomest fortune hunter and rejoice in the fact that she didn’t have to go through the indignity of that again. What reasonable woman would want to?
Warm milk and biscuits would help things, she decided, wrapping a shawl around her nightgown and sticking her feet in soft, fur-lined slippers. She headed out into the hall, moving as quietly as she could so as not to wake the others.
The ground floor of Carstairs House held the training rooms nowadays, plus her small office and library. The first floor held her formal salon and bedrooms for herself and her staff. Emma Cadbury had the adjoining room, with several of the older women sharing rooms toward the back of the house. She’d put Violet in one of them, simply because she was older than most of the girls on the second-and third-floor bedrooms. It might have been a mistake.
There wasn’t a sound as she crept down the hall. She had no idea whether Violet had slipped out the moment she had a chance, to go running back to Viscount Rohan. It was hard to convince a beautiful young woman that she was better off laboring under difficult terms for pence rather than pounds for lying on her back, though Melisande couldn’t figure out why. Surely any reasonable woman would willingly take a cut in her income simply for the chance not to have to let a man do those things to her. She shivered slightly, thinking of Rohan’s dark eyes as he’d watched her. Finish what Violet started, indeed!
She was sitting at the scarred wooden table in the center of the kitchen, waiting for the tea to steep, when she heard a sound from the hallway. It was too early for even the sprightliest kitchen wench—the bread wouldn’t need to be started for another hour—and Melisande froze in sudden fear. Only to see Emma stick her head in the room, her worried expression brightening when she saw Melisande.
“I heard you go out,” she said, coming into the room and grabbing a thick white mug from the shelf. “I assumed you were Violet, but she’s sound asleep in bed, looking like the perfect angel.” She snorted.
“Probably not for long,” Melisande said, pushing the plate of biscuits toward her.
“No, probably not. You can’t save them all. Not if they don’t want to be saved.”
For a moment Melisande busied herself with the teapot, pouring mugs of hot tea as Emma took the seat opposite her. “I don’t understand it. Why wouldn’t they be happy to get away from all that degradation? When there’s a decent way to live without having some man pawing you all the time, why wouldn’t you jump at the chance?”
A small smile curved Emma’s mouth. She was a beautiful woman, Melisande thought dispassionately. It would make a lot of sense if their names were switched. Melisande should be a raven-haired beauty; Emma should be the brown wren.
“There’s a surprising amount of pleasure to be had in bed.” She took a sip of her tea.
Melisande made a sound of disdain. “I find that hard to believe. It’s not as if I hadn’t…as if I were still… I have experience, you know.”
“Of course you have.” Emma’s voice was soothing. “But you will admit, not quite as much as I do.”
“We’re the same age,” Melisande said, knowing she sounded childish.
“You’re a century younger. Be glad of it, my dear.”
“But you just said there was surprising pleasure to be had in bed.”
“And you’ll find it. With the right man.”
Melisande shook her head. “I don’t think so. And you’ve eschewed the company of men to live here, as well. Don’t you miss this purported ‘pleasure’?”
“What brought this up?”
“Nothing. Just something Violet said when I found her at Viscount Rohan’s.”
“And that was?”
For a moment Melisande hesitated, and then she spoke. “She said she liked it. Now I could see that if one was to enjoy the act with anyone then Viscount Rohan would be the man…” The words were already out of her mouth before she realized how damning they were.
“He’s a very handsome man,” Emma agreed gravely, but there was still a twinkle in her eye. “All the Rohans are beautiful and wicked and irresistible. It’s only natural you would have a tendre for him.”
“Not likely,” Melisande said, reaching for another biscuit. “As you said, he’s a handsome man—I’d have to be dead not to notice, and I’m not dead. That doesn’t mean I want to go anywhere near him.”
“But the question is, are you tempted?”
Melisande hid her instinctive reaction. “Of course not! And I’m not the kind of woman Viscount Rohan gets involved with. Thank heavens!”
“Thank heavens, why?” Emma pursued. “If you’re not tempted then why would it matter whether he was interested or not?”
The very thought of Benedick Rohan turning those dark eyes on her with anything less than the annoyance or, at best, indifference, was enough to make her blood run cold. And hot. “When did you become such a matchmaker?” she demanded.
Emma smiled. “Seven years running a house of ill repute gives me a great deal of experience. I can tell when someone’s interested, and I can tell when it would be a good match.”
“Well, I’m not interested.”
“Of course you aren’t.” Emma’s eyes were alight with merriment.
“You’ll see. Sooner or later I expect I’ll run into him again, and I’ll have a chance to prove I don’t care. Though I’m not going after Violet again. This is her last chance.”
Emma shook her head. “She won’t stay.”
“No. And Viscount Rohan is welcome to her.” Melisande rose, yawning. “I don’t know whether I should go back to bed or give it up and dress for the day.”
“You’ll dress for the day,” Emma returned. “You’re the most active creature I know—you’re bound to have a hundred things you could accomplish before noon.”
“Am I that predictable?”
“Yes.”
Emma remained at the table long after Melisande had left, staring into her teacup. She wished she could read the leaves. She knew her past—it would be lovely to have the assurance that the future would be a calmer, safer one.
There were a thousand excuses for what she’d become, she thought coolly. A hysterical mother who’d thrown herself off the third-story roof of their ramshackle house in Plymouth. A cold, withdrawn father, obsessed with sin and salvation, whose attention took the form of beatings and ritual scrubbings. And a grandfather who touched her, who wanted to be touched, who whispered that it was her fault—she was the wicked one to lure him so, that she would burn in the flames of hell, and at the age of eleven she had believed him.
He’d died soon thereafter, and that had been her fault, as well. She’d prayed for his death. Evil creature that she was, she’d prayed that he would die and she wouldn’t have to let him put his gnarled, painful hands on her. And so he had died, because she had asked for it, and her sins had been compounded.
She had run away when she was fifteen, after her father had dragged her into her Spartan bedchamber by her hair, stripped off her clothes to expose her wicked, temptress’s body, and washed her. Washed every part of her, roughly, and then slowly, and the shame had paralyzed her, shame and fear, and she knew she had brought even her holy father to sin by her wanton form, and she’d run, before she could tempt him further.
She’d had enough money to get her as far as London, and old Mother Howard had been there to meet the stagecoach, as she so often was. A sweet, elderly figure with a comforting smile and soft hands, she’d offered her a safe place to stay while she found work in the teeming city, and Emma, who’d never known a woman’s kindness but was at least certain that her looks would elicit no demon’s temptation, had gone with her, grateful and expectant.
She always wondered at what price the old hag had sold her virginity. She only knew the bitch had chortled as someone had held her down and administered enough of the drug to keep her compliant but still awake, that the sum outstripped anything she had received in the past.
At the end of that hideous night she’d been returned to the room full of sullen girls, and she’d lay in her cot, weeping, wanting to die. Until someone sat down beside her and spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.
“Crying won’t do you no good, my girl,” Mollie Biscuits had said. “I’d tell you that the worst of it is over, but that might not be true. Old Mother Howard has some clients who like to hurt a girl in order to get it up, but the good news is that even more of them like to be hurt themselves. You’ll end up with the chance to whip some of the men who want to hurt you, and there’s revenge to be had with that.”
Emma didn’t lift her head, but her tears had stopped, and she listened.
“Many of them will only want you to pleasure them with your mouth, and that won’t take long. Some will want you for the night, but if you know a few tricks you’ll find you can tire them in less than an hour and then spend the rest of the night sleeping in a better bed than this one. Some want strange, unnatural things, and you go along with it, because you have no choice.
“But, lass, she’s old and sick. I’ve heard her coughing, late at night, and she’ll be dead before Whitsuntide. I won’t say you’ll be free then—her bully boys will try to keep you on. And for most of us, we have no place to go. We’ll stay here, and do what we know how to do, because otherwise it’s the streets, and that’s a short ride to an ugly death.
“But you can go home again. Mother Howard will make certain there are no babies, and you can return to whatever country town you came from and forget any of this ever happened.”
Emma had lifted her head then, and her tears had stopped. The woman sitting opposite her was large and comfortable-looking, older than the women who watched her with wary sympathy. “I can’t go home…. That would be worse.”
Mollie Biscuits had nodded. “Then you’ll make the best of it here. We’ll help you, won’t we, girls? There are tricks of the trade, so to speak. And Mother Howard’s sister isn’t as hard a soul as the auld bitch. If she takes over we’ve got half a chance to make things better in this place.”
Emma had sat up then, looking around her. The attic dormitory was cold and dirty, the narrow beds lined up against the two walls. The food she’d had so far was foul, there was no way to wash and the privy was disgusting. Worse, she thought she could feel bugs crawling on her skin.
“No choice, my girl,” another woman, a young redhead with an Irish accent had said. “May as well make the best of it.”
And something had hardened inside Emma right then, a core of steel she’d never known she’d had. They were right—there was no choice. Her father had always told her she was born to tempt men; her grandfather had told her she would be a whore when she grew up. It was her fault, she’d been born that way and there was no escape.
But she could make things better. She didn’t have to live in hunger and filth. “Yes.” Her cool, elegant voice had hit a note of determination. “We can make the best of it.”
Mollie Biscuits had chuckled comfortably. “Well, listen to ’er ladyship talk! You’re a right proper one, aren’t you? Must be some toff’s bastard to end up like this, but we don’t worry about where any of us come from. From now on, we’re your family. I’m Mollie Biscuits, this is Agnes and Long Jane, Jenny and Agnes and Thin Polly. I’ll introduce you to the others when they wake up. We look after each other, we do. Warn each other of the bad ones. Some of the girls like some tricks better than others, and if we’re careful we can trade off. Mother Hubbard doesn’t mind, as long as the gentlemen are satisfied, and her sister will be easier to get around. And once you’re used to it, it’s not hard work.” She let out a wheezing laugh. “At least you’re not on your feet all day.”
Mollie Biscuits hadn’t looked like she was born to tempt men. She was plump and plain and cheery. The other women didn’t look like evil sirens either, just tired young women, most of them pretty enough. Clearly they weren’t the cause of their downfall, only the victims.
But Emma had known she was different. She knew in her heart she was evil, and she belonged in this life.
But she could make it better. For herself, and for the others. And she had.
Mollie Biscuits had been right—Mother Hubbard had died soon after Easter, and her sister had taken over. It had been easy enough to start helping out. For one thing, it got her out of having to provide for as many of the gentlemen who showed up at the White Pearl. For another, as Emma had slowly gotten Mrs. Timmins, who’d never been married, to clean up the place and serve better meals, she’d been able to charge more for her stable of girls. Emma had convinced her to put the extra money into sprucing up the building, bringing in a better class of customer and correspondingly higher fees, and it had gone from there. By the time Mrs. Timmins had died Emma was nineteen years old and more than ready to take over the reins of the business. She’d dismissed all the bully boys but one, and she’d kept him on to keep the girls safe from unruly customers. She’d instituted baths and good food and most of the money going toward the girls.
She’d sold their bodies, even though they were willing and grateful for her care, and she had to pay penance, for that and for the sins her body had forced from her family. She had no doubt it was that sinfulness that had caused her mother to kill herself. She’d known what a demon she’d given birth to.
And so she’d taken to going to St. Martin’s Hospital every few days, to help out, and Mollie Biscuits would go with her. No other women ever went to the public hospital—only whores were considered suitable for such work. She’d done what she could for the sick and the dying, the soldiers home from the Afghan wars with arms and legs missing, with eyes clouded with madness from the horror they’d lived through. Most of them died, and she found she couldn’t be sorry. It was the only relief they could look forward to.
She’d done what she could to help keep the rooms clean; she helped change dressings, ignoring the foul stench of putrefaction. She’d helped when the doctors had taken off limbs, sitting on the chest of a screaming patient while others held him down. She’d cradled the dying in her arms, singing old Welsh lullabies in their ears as she’d rocked them. She’d washed the dead and she’d fed the living.
And she’d met Brandon Rohan one stormy winter day, and life hadn’t been the same.